The KDE community has announced immediate availability of KDE Plasma 5.11 beta, development release prior to upcoming stable release planned for Mid-October. This beta release gives a clear overview of what we can expect from final release. It includes a redesigned settings app, improved notification systems and a better and powerful task manager.

In addition to changes in existing visual components, Plasma 5.11 will be the first release to provide a Vault, a system to encrypt and open set of documents in secure and user friendly way. This feature will make Plasma a good choice for people who keep more concern on their security and privacy.

The redesigned System Settings, in Plasma makes navigation between different sections easier by providing a navigation menu on left side of menu. It resembles with GNOME 3.26 control center remotely. This interface is made optional and users can either stick with traditional experience or get matured for this new design.

Other highlights in Plasma 5.11 includes:

Considering the demand from users, a notification history is added. This will help users to see the notifications shown in their absence and expired notifications. This is an experimental feature in 5.11 beta release. It may or may not be in final release based on tester feedback.

There are multiple functionality changes in task manager, and also it offers a smooth experience.

As mentioned earlier, Vault will help users to open groups of documents in secure and user friendly way.

Multiple improvements in application menu which includes better search results, disabling of favorites section if there is nothing to show, folder view is now default desktop ..etc

A lot of work has been put into Plasma on Wayland. KWin, Plasma's
Wayland compositor, can now automatically apply scaling based on the
pixel density of a screen and even do so for each screen individually.
This will significantly improve user experience on setups with multiple
monitors, such as when a regular external monitor is connected to a
modern high-resolution laptop. Moreover, legacy applications not
supporting this functionality may be upscaled to remain readable.